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Corbella: Uprising of Calgary business owners plan to rally at City Hall

Author of the article:

Licia Corbella

Publishing date:

June 7, 2019 • 4 minute read

Inglewood business owners from left; Kyle Chow, Recess Shop, Connor Gould, The Livery Shop, Veronica Murphy, Rick Rack Textiles and Kelly Doody, The Social School are among those who are organizing to protest huge business tax hikes at City Hall on Monday. The four were photographed in Inglewood on Thursday June 6, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

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“Our message is that this is indeed a crisis and it’s one created by our city government,” says Kelly Doody, the unwitting driving force behind the planned rally.

Doody has been thrust into the activist role ever since a chalkboard sign she set up in front of her shop was featured by Postmedia and hit the collective solar plexus of Calgary’s business community. Her sign simply points out that the property tax on the building that she leases space in has spiked from $1,356 per month to $6,425 per month, with the first huge increase to be paid July 1.

Kelly Doody, Owner of The Social School, is not impressed with this months property taxes. Her Inglewood business is facing an over 400% increase. Sunday, June 2, 2019. Brendan Miller/Postmedia

Who better, however, than the owner of a digital marketing school —Social School,with its uber funky mid-century-modern-styled digs on 9th Avenue in Inglewood — to rally the worried and frustrated entrepreneurs in this city, who are usually way too busy trying to make a living to protest, let alone organize a protest.

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On Wednesday night, Doody established a website, yycsmallbiz.com, that urges small business owners and those who support them to show up at city hall at 7:30 a.m. Monday, half an hour before Mayor Naheed Nenshi and the rest of council tries to come up with a solution to the crisis they created.

The website encourages all who show up to print some of the badges on the site, including ones that say: “Come hell or high taxes”, “Keep Calgary open”, “I (heart) YYC small biz”, “In this together”, “Grow local” and “Here to stay”.

Attendees are also encouraged to bring copies of their business tax bills or to make signs indicating how many people they employ and other pertinent information, “to remind council that we are Calgarians building community.”

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On Thursday morning, Doody is joined by other small business owners — some of the most impressive young people you’ll ever meet — sitting on her velvet couches discussing the predicament they find themselves in.

Veronica Murphy says she had to do something last week that she’s never had to do before. She laid off an employee — “a wonderful young person” — and it broke her heart.

Rick Rack Textiles business owner Veronica Murphy talked with Postmedia about how huge tax increases are affecting her Inglewood business during an interview on Thursday June 6, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

Murphy, the owner of Stash — a knitting store and school that has 17 employees — and Rick Rack Textiles, which also teaches sewing in the shop and has six employees, says she has a sound business plan but “it did not accommodate for a more than 300 per cent increase in business taxes.

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“The city has cut me off at the knees and is telling me to reach higher,” says Murphy, who has a five-year-old daughter.

“I’ve been blindsided by this. No small business on the planet could accommodate this kind of spike in taxes without a lot of pain.”

She wonders when city council is going to reach higher, tighten its belt and run the city the way she runs her business and household — with prudence, diligence and care.

Doody says they have all weathered numerous fiscal storms — the recession, the 2013 flood, the drop in the value of the dollar, the spike in the minimum wage and the carbon tax.

Before she can finish her sentence, Murphy says, “this is the toughest thing so far. This tax increase is worse than all of that.”

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Kyle Chow, 36, the owner of Plant — which sells plants, gardening supplies and the like, where his two dogs wander around greeting his loyal customers — and Recess Stationary, in the same building as Doody, nods in agreement.

Recess Shop business owner Kyle Chow talked with Postmedia about how huge tax increases are affecting his Inglewood business during an interview on Thursday June 6, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

He says he and Doody will have to absorb the bulk of the tax increase in the building, or about $2,400 more per month. That’s a lot of stationery and plants to sell, particularly when it means it’s after tax. He calculates he’ll have to make another $4,800 per month just to pay for the tax increase.

That’s what they’re hoping to change with the rally on Monday.

On Thursday night, Richard Truscott, vice-president of Alberta and B.C. for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says he is sending an alert to his members on Friday about the rally.

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“We’re going to try to get as many members as we can to show up,” says Truscott, who has been fighting the city’s dependency on the commercial side of the tax base for a decade.

“I’ve never heard this level of frustration and anger about a tax issue in Calgary before,” he says. “This has been boiling along for a long time, mind you, it’s been a constant source of stress and frustration for our members and it’s sad that it’s taken a crisis to bring it to a head. This is an all-out uprising. It’s ironic that it took a failure of city council to get a short-term solution that’s going to cause, hopefully, a long-term fix on this issue once and for all.”

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Inglewood business owners from left; Connor Gould, The Livery Shop, Veronica Murphy, Rick Rack Textiles and Kyle Chow, Recess Shop are among those who are organizing to protest huge business tax hikes at City Hall on Monday. The three were photographed in Inglewood on Thursday June 6, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

Connor Gould, 33, co-owner of the Livery Shop and Camp Brand Goods, recently moved his business to a new building on 9th Avenue and he’s bracing himself for a hefty tax increase. “I don’t know if I’m going to be in the same boat but these are friends and this is a close community of small business owners and we all support one another — we’re neighbours, good neighbours. We’re helping to create a vibrant neighbourhood and this could destroy it all.”

Gould says they “don’t want another Band-Aid fix, like in the past years. We need a real fix to come through so I don’t have a heart attack. Is it just this year that gets fixed and next year we get smoked again?” he asks.

“We need to send council a message. We want them to see our faces. To remember that we’re people behind those business taxes they’re sending out.”

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